Daily Getaways have been one of the cheapest ways during the year to buy hotel loyalty points during the sales of the past two years. The U.S. Travel Association and American Express offer U.S. resident buyers an opportunity to pick up some good value travel deals over the next five weeks from April 9 through May 11 for hotel stays and hotel loyalty points, entertainment parks, car rentals and possibly some domestic airline deals.
This is the third year of Daily Getaways offers in April and May. The sales process changes a little each year. In 2010 there was only one price for each offer and in 2011 the price went up about 10% for many of the same items and co-sponsor American Express offered its card members a 10% discount when payment used an American Express card.
In 2012 there is an opportunity to register for a pre-sale for some items and buy from a reserve pool an hour earlier than the general public.
The past two years brought questions from readers about who is actually behind these deals and how trustworthy is the seller of these travel packages? In this post I want to provide some background information about the U.S. Travel Association and Discover America for readers and other bloggers who will be reading and writing about these offers for the next six weeks.
I will go over the Daily Getaways sales in detail in a separate post and specifically discuss the Priority Club April 9 points packages offers.
Who are the U.S. Travel Association, Discover America and See America?
Discover America – the Official U.S. Travel and Tourism of the U.S. Travel Industry. The website is operated by the U.S. Travel Association. U.S. Travel is the non-profit trade organization representing over 2,000 organizations for the U.S. travel industry with offices located in Washington D.C.
Discover America and See America are websites operated by the U.S. Travel Association. Discover America is the official travel and tourism website of the United States and promotes travel to the U.S. Discover America is designed to serve international travelers to the U.S. from the UK, Canada, Mexico, Germany and Japan and other countries.
Daily Getaways are a marketing promotion by U.S. Travel Association and dozens of top travel brands to promote domestic summer travel in the U.S. for Americans. The upcoming five weeks of sales April 9-May 11, 2012 will be the third year of Daily Getaways. In the past two years these offers were called the Discover America Daily Getaways, but that seems to have changed in 2012.
See America appears to be a recently launched website by U.S. Travel Association for 2012 to promote tourism domestically among U.S. residents. I am only the 35th person to like the See America Facebook page, so it must be fairly new.
I wonder if next year the Daily Getaways sales will be “See America Daily Getaways” since these sales are only available to U.S. residents.
The U.S. Travel Association is a professional organization which brings together leading travel companies, brands and organizations in a coordinated effort to promote and market travel to and within the U.S. This is a major organization that participates in activities from marketing U.S. travel and tourism to staging the International Pow Wow where $3.5 billion dollars in travel sales transactions are negotiated among vendors and agencies representing international tourism to the U.S.
Every major hotel chain, airline, car agency, travel agency, visitor and tourist boards from around the U.S. are members of the U.S. Travel Association. The organization collects and disseminates research, promotes tourism and lobbies for politically favorable legislation to promote U.S. tourism. Marketing is a major effort of the U.S. Travel Association.
International Pow Wow 2012 – Los Angeles
In three weeks I will be attending International Pow Wow 2012 in Los Angeles as a domestic journalist. The International Pow Wow is the largest travel trade show conference in the U.S. orgainized by the U.S. Travel Association with the purpose of selling travel for international visitors to the U.S. There are over 1,200 vendors representing hotels and regional destinations across the U.S.
I’ll be blogging Los Angeles and IPW 2012 from April 21-25, 2012. It is tough to blog between meetings, tours and parties, but I’ll give my blogger best effort.
Related Posts:
Here are my posts describing the International Pow Wow 2011 event in San Francisco.
Earning Hotel Points for Cheaper Stays (5-22-2011) –this post gives my rationale for collecting hotel loyalty points from several different chains and the value of buying points through Discover America Daily Getaways.
Being Wowed at International Pow Wow 2011 San Francisco (5-24-2011)
A California Yankee Blogger in U.S. Travel Association’s Court (5-26-2011)
Making Contact at International Pow Wow 2011 San Francisco (5-29-2011)
And my next post will focus on this year’s Daily Getaways.
Update April 2, 2012: I quickly edited this post immediately after publishing once I noticed that Discover America is not used anywhere in this year’s sale as it was in the past two years. The sale is now listed as U.S. Travel Association and American Express.
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